Dubai’s industrial creative neighbourhood Alserkal Avenue is home to the annual arts and culture festival Al Quoz, and with this year’s edition around the corner, we highlight the best things to see and do.
Running through Jan 24 and 25, Al Quoz brings together more than 60 thinkers and creatives from the prisms of music, art, design and performance.
This year’s festival will combine art exhibitions, live music, contemporary dance performances, food trucks, film screenings and outdoor art installations.
Indulge in Palestine’s best movies
Reel Palestine Film Festival, which runs in collaboration with Cinema Akil (the GCC’s first arthouse cinema) will screen a number of indie films from Palestine across the festival. For it’s closing on January 25, the festival will present two free outdoor screenings: ‘Ambience’ (2019) by director Wisam Al Jafri, and ‘Hurdle’ (2019), by director Michael Rowley.
Watch performances by Jordanian-Palestinian bands
There will be a free concert by Jordanian-Palestinian shamstep band 47Soul, which combines traditional dabke music with electronic beats, and is best-known for creating the Shamstep, a combination of mijwiz (a Levantine folk musical style) and dubstep.
See London’s best contemporary dancers
Block Universe, London’s leading international performance art festival and commissioning body, will present performances by Egle Budvytyte, Alex Miritziu, and Himali Singh Soin across the weekend in and around Concrete, the OMA-designed building shortlisted for the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
Learn about the future of food
On January 24, National Dish: UAE by Center for Genomic Gastronomy, will open. This is a forecasting exercise whereby the Center for Genomic Gastronomy imagines the elements of a new national dish for the UAE based on the principle concept that eaters shape the Earth through the foods and stories we celebrate, cultivate, and propagate. The exhibition, produced by Alserkal and inspired by FOOD: Bigger than the Plate at the V&A.
See the latest exhibitions on Alserkal
Catch the newest openings at Alserkal Avenue’s contemporary art galleries, including a solo show by Athier at Ayyam Gallery; Towards Opacity by Vikram Divecha at Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde; Olaf Breuning’s Brainswashed by Nature at Carbon 12; and Such a Morning, a solo exhibition by Anwar Kanwar at Ishara Art Foundatio.
